Hold up on your litigation djane....the meeting drew a collective yawn from participants(at least those that won't be doing any investment banking with LOR/GSTRF). We knew the phones worked. We knew the satellites worked. The G* phone sounded EXACTLY like my ThinPhone, which is excellent. No discernible delay. I made at least 15 calls. I spent 15 minutes beneath, around, and in between branches of the avaialble trees. I was dropped twice---once while leaning against a tree trunk after having talked about 3 minutes. I moved 45 degrees around my chosen trunk, reacquired the sat, and redialed. The other time when I purposely folded the antenna down instead of up. It works fine perpendicular to the ground or going straight up parallel to the phone long axis. Calls to cell or other G* phones were just fine. Payphones and house phones were just the same with no worries about ever being dropped. All phones are dial the number and connect--just likelandline or cell. Very simple. Handsets are not heavy, just large to accomodate the aerial. The GSM models were not available. The second generation Telital phones were cool(pictures only). I do not think we will see GSM phones anytime soon.
Now, what we really wanted to know about was subs. We learned nothing there. Rollouts are all focused on 2000. Very soft rollouts in November and December, with true billing in December. No volumes to speak of. SP's have ordered approximately 200K phones out of the initial 300K. Airtouch will be the service provider in Brazil. TESAM stressed fixed service, noting that Peru(???) government was subsidizing G* phones for rural coverage. Still much testing going on. Mostly a fluff presentation with no meat.
Cyberstar prsented some demos, which were fine, but would not tell us how they are to make money on it. I don't see it. They did announce they were to do a two way internet service for consumers, using Ku-band spot beam sats, and were going to do it soon. That is what the presentation said. Questioning afterward made that seem much murkier. I frankly don't know what the hell they are up to, and perhaps they don't either. There is only one way to provide that service profitably, and only one company's technology that would allow the capacity to get it done. I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to get done. FSS and SS/L were more fluff pieces.
I'll post more later, but you get the gist |
